Fugly Friday: RogerART

I would be remiss in continuing this series without a stop at RogerART.com — a throwback on the web in so many ways. Run by Earth Citizen Roger Drowne, the site is all text and GIF’s, they way HTML 1.0 intended. Roger’s message is pure, I’ll give him that. He revels in being consistently lumped into the “worst” website category, which I think is terrific. Roger has some painting ability with traditional media, but judging from his digital artwork, it leaves a bit to be desired, I think.

Roger eschews the tradtional top nav for a blast of text and GIF goodness that’ll have you scrolling down in no time — a convenient list of links to his other sites (also replicated at the bottom of the page in case you missed it). If you’re color-blind (as I’m sure Roger would prefer) you won’t be able to read random portions of the page. That’s because random words are randomly colored random web-safe colors.

If you brave a scroll down you’ll find quite the menagerie of crappy animated GIF’s and half-assed Paint artwork. Roger’s text will also have you checking your default settings, but don’t worry: it’s all part of the plan. Some text should be gigantic, and some text should be just overly large. You’ll have a ball playing “is this a link” too, since there’s a lot of blue text. Luckily, all URL’s are using the default HTML spec in a handy blue with underline… you’ll just have to wade through the sea of SMS-like gibberish to find them.

So sure, RogerART is a design abomination — but is it art? Let’s turn to our dictionary.app definition of kitsch:

kitsch |ki ch |
noun

art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way : the lava lamp is an example of sixties kitsch | [as adj. ] kitsch decor.

We have a winner! Here’s hoping Roger continues to refuse professional design help for at least another 10 years.